NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD - NAMED ONE OF PASTE´S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time - NPR - The Washington Post - Chicago Tribune - Vanity Fair - Esquire - Good Housekeeping - Paste - Town & Country - The New York Public Library - Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her--but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he´s ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia´s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he´s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram´s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children--the violent and capricious separation of families--and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today´s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.